The divorce between publishing scion and Ralph Lauren veteran James B. Fairchild and real-estate broker Whitney St. John has taken an ugly turn. He’s blasted her as “bitter” and claims she’s deliberately holding back valuable items that he personally collected for his Hamptons store.

Fairchild, 55, son of former Women’s Wear Daily and W publisher John Fairchild, opened a high-end lifestyle shop on Hampton Road in Southampton, selling vintage and rare home and fashion pieces he had picked up from around the world.

Sources tell us Fairchild had originally planned to open the store with St. John, a former fashion director at Ralph by Ralph Lauren. But last year the golden couple — likened in a breathless wedding announcement to a modern-day “Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald” — filed for divorce after 17 years of marriage.

A source told us, “Fairchild believes St. John is holding items worth hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for his store, including over $60,000 in jewelry, some pieces bought in Gstaad while skiing with his sons and custom-made zebra ottomans.

“The items had been stored in the couple’s Bridgehampton home but disappeared one weekend while Fairchild was in the city with their two sons. He has asked for the pieces back but has met with no response. The divorce is in a deadlock.”

The couple wed in 1994 at St. John’s family house, also in Bridgehampton. A few years ago, they sold their place in the city, gave up their jobs with Ralph Lauren and moved to their 18th-century-style Hamptons house full time.

Fairchild told us in a statement, “I am truly disappointed that Whitney has become so bitter in this situation. It is obvious that she does not want my store to succeed by refusing to give me the items that were always meant for the store.”

St. John, now a real-estate broker at Saunders, didn’t respond to e-mails.